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Roleplaying Games Overview

Overview: Roleplaying Games

Image and text: Roleplaying Games

The Witcher

The Witcher game is based on the novels written by Andrzej Sapkowski, the most popular fantasy author in Poland. Three of these books are already translated into english yet: The last Wish, Sword of Destiny and Blood of Elves (status 2012). Many more short stories exist of the famous Witcher Geralt of Rivia, but they are only available in polish at this time.
For 2012 the novel Times of Contempt is awaited, and a short story book with two Witcher-stories in it called Something ends, Something begins is available as far as I know.

The first game of The Witcher begins in Kaer Morhen, an old ruined fortress where the witchers live. Geralt of Rivia was nearly dead when the witchers found him and he has to learn all things again. During the following assault on the fortress the player learns through a tutorial how to fight and use his skills step by step. The player learns to know the other witchers here and it is a pity that in the rest of the game they never show up again (they are also not included in The Witcher 2).

As in the books Geralt has to make decisions, decisions that are not just evil or good but are hanging somewhere between, because the world is not just depending on evil or good. It is a dark world Sapkowski settled his witcher-stories in and so is the game.
Elves and dwarves are only a secondary class, racism and violence is also included in the game like the fact that witchers are mutants and for this not very likely be seen. They are paid for slaying monsters and nobody wants to have anything to do with them.
The game also includes Geralts encounters with women, there is no sex shown but within the game he can collect sexcards with nice pictures of those women.

The second game, The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings, is good too, but for my taste the damned console controls even on a PC are reducing the pleasure. It is much harder to play now but still possible once you got the feeling for those console controls. Nevertheless this second part has a good story, what I am missing are Eskel and other witchers.

I haven't written any content pages for TW2, but here's a short description of the story.
The game begins in a prison cell, here the player learns how to use the controls and about Geralt, later in the city of Flotsam Geralt will then meet some of his old friends, like Dandelion and Zoltan Chivey, and as usual Geralt has to solve a lot of problems.

For the PC version of The Witcher 2 there is an update (the enhanced edition), just like in TW1 the PC game got new content for free to download. Make sure you don't miss it!

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Dragon Age: Origins

The game Dragon Age: Origins is more or less the continue of the Baldur's Gate row, at least the gameplay is like it, but it has it's own continent named Thedas with it's own new creatures and characters. It is a roleplaying game like Baldur's Gate and Bioware created the rules system complete new, so Dragon Age is not based on the D&D (or AD&D) rules.

Dragon Age: Origins was released on 3. November 2009 in USA and on 6. November 2009 here in Germany. The Toolset that comes with the game is one of the best toolsets I have ever seen. Bioware promised that the toolset should be very easy to use even for beginners, but in the end it is not really true.

There are three books out yet written by David Gaider: The stolen Throne, The Calling and Asunder.

The stolen Throne is the first prequel to the game Dragon Age: Origins. The second book, the Calling, is the sequel to the Stolen Throne and also the second prequel for the first game. And the third book, Asunder, is playing after Dragon Age 2 and maybe right before Dragon Age 3.

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